Campaigners win permission for judicial review of decision to move hospital services

Campaigners have been given permission to bring a judicial review challenge over a decision by two clinical commissioning groups to move services away from South Tyneside Hospital.

NHS Sunderland CCG and NHS South Tyneside CCG decided earlier this year that maternity, women’s healthcare, paediatric and stroke services should be moved to Sunderland.

According to law firm Irwin Mitchell, which is acting for the campaign group, His Honour Judge Saffman said he believed the grounds put forward were “sufficiently arguable such as to justify the granting of permission”.

Helen Smith, a public law specialist at Irwin Mitchell’s Newcastle office, said: “This is obviously a very important issue and one which affects thousands of people’s access to much needed, potentially life-saving local NHS hospital services. This is why it is crucial that any decision made in respect of those services, is made correctly and lawfully.

“Our legal challenge raises questions around the decisions taken by the CCGs because of a potentially flawed consultation process which breached the principles of procedural fairness and decisions made on the basis of potential flaws in the transport analysis.

“Our clients believe the proposals to transfer the NHS services to Sunderland were based on a flawed assessment of the impact on patients and that the criteria to assess the cost of this was also flawed.”